Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

While it's generally accepted that sexual activities should be personal private matters between willing adult participants, our obsession with sex has always exerted a powerful influence on our social systems and even the character of our civilizations. In this age of accelerating change, it's hardly a surprise that we've been experimenting with the sex related aspects of society, just as we've tinkered with the political and economic aspects.

The media has lately been full of news about the most recent violent outrages committed by young killers. Yet again we are treated to interviews with friends and neighbors relating how they find it hard to believe the perpetrators were capable of such acts. Yet again we're told by those claiming to be experts that such appalling crimes couldn't be the results of the free will of the youthful killers, and must be the result of other causes.

One of the more reasonable sounding demands percolating out of the mass hysteria surrounding the recent premeditated mass murders committed by children, has been a renewed demand that parents be held accountable for the actions of their children. Personal accountability has always been a fundamental principle in our free society. As such it would seem appropriate to demand that the parents of these youthful killers be held accountable.

Modern society appears to be increasingly embracing two divergent trends that are mutually antagonistic. One trend has been for liberated women to become increasingly strident in their demands for greater emotional involvement from their men. The women of today are actively questioning the age old acceptance of emotionally unsatisfactory men, and demanding that their needs be respected. But the increased demands of women are running headlong into the tendency of both men and women to spend more and more of their time working.

The concept of work has evolved from just a way to put food on the table and a roof overhead, to a primary source of pleasure and satisfaction in the ideal life. While there are some advocating returning the focus closer to the family and our internal emotional well-being, for the vast majority of us work has become not just a means of survival but a major portion of the purpose and meaning of secular life.

According to countless frustrated spouses, comedians, and pundits hard up for an idea to fill yet another column, men seem to suffer from an irrational resistance to stopping to ask for directions when lost in strange territory. This alleged flaw in the male psyche has been so widely reported for so long that there must be some substance to the allegation. That this trait is shared by most if not all men, and has proven so resistant to the attempted behavior modifications and downright nagging of so many women suggests a genetic predisposition.